Friday, April 14, 2006

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Tuesday April 18th

Cantrell with Mike Rischitelli

Mike and I met at Mr. Pete’s at a little past 1:00 on a warm Tuesday afternoon. Started at Turkey Pen trailhead and missed the signs that said that every trail we had decided to ride was closed due to prescribed burning. I led down the singletrack and nearly got in over my head right away. The new fork still isn’t tuned out properly. Mike was on fire as we headed up Mullinax to Squirril. Quick breather at the top of Bradley (pea gap) and we continued on. As soon as Squirril got real tech Mike crashed very very hard. It was one of those ‘hit a landmine’ type crashes, like, what the hell just happened?!?! Well what happened was Mike smashed his bad knee into his stem. He had a goose egg right away bit figured we could continue on. We kept riding towards Cantrell. Tons of fun after the top and Mike had another unsceduled dismount as we approached the intersection. Amazing. His bike flipped off the side and fell, easily 10 feet down into the creek. Mike was right in front of me thank God. He went over the bars and landed on his feet, again, Amazing. We noticed the scorched Earth ahead of us and headed down Cantrell. I guess the prescribed burn DID get out of hand, eh? We rode through brand new ash and still smouldering ground until the first crossing of Cantrell. Mikes knee was really starting to resemble a softball at this point and he was saying it was getting real stiff so we slowed the pace considerably. I was getting used to the fork at this point though and had a ton of fun on the descent. Quicker than I had imagined we were at the old lodge, crossed the river twice, and headed back up 66 jumps to the car. Mike was walking and one leg peddeling at that point. Back to the truck in 3 hours. Not bad! I hope your knee feels better Mike!